1 Project Summary/Abstract: 2 3 The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (NYSDAM) has an expansive food 4 safety inspection and regulatory laboratory testing program. The New York State Food 5 Laboratory (Food Laboratory), a division within the NYSDAM, has the mission to provide expert 6 state of the art analytical testing in support of food safety programs in New York State. The 7 Food Laboratory, through food testing, provides support to the divisions of Food Safety and 8 Inspection, and Milk Control and Dairy Services. It is the primary servicing laboratory for the 9 New York manufactured food regulatory program and is accredited to the ISO/IEC 17025:2005 10 standard. The Food Laboratory has comprehensive testing programs for foodborne pathogens 11 and chemical residues/toxic elements in food and beverages. 12 13 If funded for Competition A, the Food Laboratory will maintain a quality management system 14 that is in compliance with the managerial and technical requirements of ISO/IEC 17025 and 15 continue to be accredited by a recognized accreditation body. It will also continue to expand the 16 number of methods and technologies within our scope of accreditation, support training of 17 laboratory staff, and maintain current staff resources to the laboratory Quality Assurance Unit. 18 19 If funded for Competition B, New York State Food Laboratory will maintain the Research 20 Collaboration Agreement with CFSAN for the Genome Trackr network. It will continue to 21 sequence a mixture of four hundred (400) or more foodborne related bacterial isolates and 22 deposit results, including the metadata, in real-time to the NCBI-NIH curated national database 23 for enteric pathogen genomes, in coordination with FDA CFSAN. It will also seek partnership 24 with universities, government agencies, and other stakeholders to support the collection of 25 isolates. 26 27 The NYSDAM fully supports FDA?s initiative of an integrated food safety system and is engaged 28 in participating in these collaborative projects that aim to improve and optimize the nation?s food 29 safety system. 30